The column describes how Petraeus manipulated the media to shape
false perceptions and how his downfall has revealed the extent to
which his deceptions affected foreign policy and the people of
Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hastings calls Petraeus a "world-class bullshit artist" and cites
Petraeus' own words from his Princeton dissertation
— “Perception” is key, he wrote: "What policymakers believe
to have taken place in any particular case is what matters — more
than what actually occurred."

Hastings shows how Petraeus used willing journalists to present
the Iraqi surge as the key to Iraq's success, downplaying the
role of Sunni militias and their Awakening — and how Petraeus
betrayed the Sunnis by leaving them to be devoured by the
Shiites.

He also explains how Petraeus "manipulated President Obama into
trying the same thing in Kabul." The Afghan surge, of
course, has been a
total failure.

But Petraeus kept his sterling reputation thanks to what Hastings
calls the "the media-military industrial
complex." Here's where it really gets
interesting.

The media, either for access or straight up cash (laundered
through an organization Petraeus started called Center For A
New American Security or CNAS), gave favorable reports or used
quotes from unnamed sources which painted favorable pictures for
one such strategy or another.

From Hastings:

(CNAS) put the journalists who were covering those
same plans and policies on its payroll. For
instance, New York Times Pentagon
correspondent Thom Shanker took money and a position from CNAS
and still covered the Pentagon; Robert Kaplan, David Cloud from
The Los Angeles Times, and others produced a small
library’s worth of hagiographies while sharing office space at
CNAS with retired generals whom they’d regularly quote in their
stories.

But these incestuous relationships were bound to cause trouble.
Case in point: biographer-turned-lover Paula Broadwell.

"She was an attractive package to push Petraeus and his
counterinsurgency ideas," writes Hastings. "Little Brown editor
Geoff Shandler once told me how 'hot' he thought Broadwell was
after she came in to meet him at his office, and indicated to me
that Broadwell had made him somewhat aroused."

Ouch.

She was "hot" and aggressive too, once describing an angry Afghan
villager whose house had been destroyed in a massive massacre as
having "a fit of theatrics."

These are the types of writers with which Petraeus surrounded
himself. But the type of woman who describes the lamentations of
another woman who's lost everything as a "fit of theatrics" is
also the type to set up dummy email accounts and send hate mail
to another woman she thought of as a threat. And the rest is
history.

Unfortunately for Petraeus, the military media and all of
its highly placed sources turned against him the moment they
smelled blood in the water.